Egypt says airports secure, no evidence Russian airliner downed by bomb

It was not immediately clear when suspension of Russian flights to Egypt would begin.

“Their withdrawal from the market is a severe blow to the industry”.

The Transport Secretary says most British tourists in Sharm el-Sheikh will be home by this evening; but EasyJet says its planned rescue flights “have been suspended by the Egyptian authorities”.

The UK Government suspended air links on Wednesday after an Airbus 321 operated by Russian airline Metrojet crashed on Saturday, killing all 224 people on board.

‘”The situation for United Kingdom flights in Sharm el Sheikh remains fluid”.

ALEXANDER BORTNIKOV, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) (through interpreter): I think it will be reasonable to suspend all Russian flights until we determine the real causes of what happened.

Two other airlines, British Airways and Thomson, both confirmed to the Guardian that their scheduled flights on Friday were expected to continue as planned. Britain also said this week that the plane might have been brought down by an explosive device, and US President Barack Obama on Thursday said the U.S. was taking “very seriously” the possibility a bomb caused the crash.

Reuters said the decision from the Kremlin is the first sign that Moscow is attaching credibility to the theory the plane was blown up.

“All Egyptian airports undergo periodical examinations by the Egyptian civil aviation authority and global inspection authorities”, Kamal said.

“Flights are coming in which will allow us to take more people home today”, Casson said in Sharm al-Sheikh.

A Sinai-based group affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the crash.

This comes as British investigators say someone at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport put a bomb either inside or on top of the luggage in the cargo hold just prior to takeoff, according to the BBC.

“We are working with the UK Government at the highest level on a solution”, it added in a statement. Britain, which has about 20,000 of its tourists in Sharm al-Sheikh, was planning to return a few of them from the resort on Friday, with only hand luggage, due to security concerns.

Early on Thursday, several US media reports cited unnamed sources as suggesting that a planted bomb might have caused the Russian plane crash in Egypt’s Sinai last week.